{"id":35004,"date":"2014-09-03T22:50:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T12:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.easyweddings.com\/au\/articles\/ive-asked-bridesmaid-dont-want-refuse\/"},"modified":"2021-11-10T03:24:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T16:24:57","slug":"ive-asked-bridesmaid-dont-want-refuse","status":"publish","type":"au-article","link":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/articles\/ive-asked-bridesmaid-dont-want-refuse\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been asked to be a bridesmaid, but I don\u2019t want to do it. How do I refuse?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><br \/>\nI\u2019ve been asked to be a bridesmaid by someone I\u2019m not terribly close to. To be honest, I don\u2019t want to do it. How do I refuse? Can I refuse?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Firstly, of course you can refuse. It\u2019s an invitation, not a demand! The thing is, if you really, really don\u2019t want to do it, the time to be honest about your feelings is when you\u2019re first asked &#8211; before the bride\u2019s planning and vision get too far down the track.<\/p>\n<p>However, since you&#8217;ve already been asked, it&#8217;s obviously a little too late for this approach.<\/p>\n<p>Only you\u2019ll know how best to deliver the news, but if you&#8217;re experiencing a real tussle as to how to decline your bride&#8217;s kind invitation, try keeping your response as generic as possible, perhaps, something like: \u201cI\u2019m honoured to be asked but I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not in a position to accept the role.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That way, you haven\u2019t hurt your bride&#8217;s feelings but you also haven\u2019t blamed a situation she could possibly solve to keep you on board, such as not being able to afford it.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px;line-height: 1.428571429\">As a compromise, perhaps you could offer to perform some other small task, such as doing a reading?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Of course, if you&#8217;re not comfortable with a generic approach, honesty is (usually) the best policy, and you could opt to tell her that you simply don&#8217;t feel that you&#8217;re close enough to her to hold such a special role.<\/p>\n<p>Just remember, however, that discovering you don&#8217;t feel quite as close to her as she feels to you may hurt her and, well, nobody wants to do that, right?<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11278,"template":"","au_article_tag":[78,54,432],"class_list":["post-35004","au-article","type-au-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","au_article_category-expert-advice","au_article_tag-bridesmaid","au_article_tag-bridesmaids","au_article_tag-etiquette-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au-article\/35004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/au-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au-article\/35004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"au_article_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easyweddings.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/au_article_tag?post=35004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}